Laser cutter investment leads to £150k sales boost for Inovus Medical
The Overview
Inovus Ltd design and manufacture surgical and medical training equipment that is sold into the NHS and healthcare markets around the world.
The business was established in 2012 and is led by Dr Elliot Street, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder and Technical Director, Jordan Van Flute, to develop high quality, affordable surgical and medical training equipment. Their growing portfolio of products includes laparoscopic simulators, airway manikins and a number of medical task trainers.
The business’ rapid growth had recently seen them move into a new facility in St Helens in Liverpool City Region which has increased the business’ footprint to manage increased production demands.
Inovus received funding to install a new laser cutter
The Challenge
Inovus manufacture niche products in a fast growing sector and have found demand outstripping their existing production capacity. To mitigate this the business needed to invest in further machinery to stream line and upscale their manufacturing capabilities.
Jordan saw that there was an opportunity to increase efficiency within production and create capacity to meet current and future demand. He approached Phil Anders, specialist Manufacturing Advisor for the Liverpool City Region Manufacturing Growth Fund for advice.
The Results
Phil met with Jordan and Elliot, together they walked the site and Phil was able to understand the business’ personal challenges and opportunities.
Phil said, “Inovus is a fantastic company which has made huge progress in a short amount of time. However, until they were able to upscale their manufacturing capacity and streamline the process from sales through to production, their growth potential would be restricted.
“I could see that with an injection of investment they could make huge gains in turnover and resolve these issues, so I decided to put them forward for one of the Manufacturing Growth Fund’s few capital grants, and help the business invest in a laser cutter. The larger and more powerful laser cutter will allow Inovus to increase their production capabilities by over 200%”.
Since receiving our grant from the Manufacturing Growth Fund and installing the new equipment, we have been able to meet the growing demand for our products with improved efficiency and reduced lead times. This has actually promoted further demand for our products and as such we have seen a significant increase in our annual turnover. I am confident that with this new equipment we will be able to comfortably handle the sustained increase in demand for our products over the coming years. We have already seen the creation of a new job secondary to this investment and with our current growth trajectory we will be looking to create many more jobs over the next 12 months.
Elliot Street, CEO
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